George kennedy

With more than 200 roles behind him, his face is quite popular among film and television fans, recognizable even by those who do not remember his name. Ideal for playing tough guys (almost always policemen and soldiers in uniform), George Kennedy was one of the most respected and loved actors by his Hollywood peers.

Born on February 25, 1925, New Yorker George Harris Kennedy, Jr. comes from a showbiz family, so at the age of two he was already appearing in a theatrical production. His father, pianist George Harris Kennedy Sr., died when he was only four years old, so he was raised by his mother, Helen A., a dancer by profession. At 7 years old, he was DJing at a radio station in his hometown.

George Kennedy had a military vocation, so during World War II he enlisted in the army. He participated in various combats and ended up assigned to the first military information service of the United States. At the end of the conflict he planned to continue in the barracks forever, but after 16 years as a soldier he suffered a back injury that made him rethink his life, and he decided to return to the field of acting.

He made his debut in 1956 precisely playing a military man, in numerous episodes of The Phil Silvers Show , a sitcom also known as Sgt. Bilko . For five years he played many one-sentence roles in numerous series. In cinema he made his debut as an extra, as one of the rebellious gladiators who support the protagonist in the mythical Spartacus , by Stanley Kubrick . His career took a turn when he played tough landowner Nathan Dillon in A Reason For Living , a drama in the service of pop star Jimmie Rodgers .

From that moment, George Kennedy begins to embody characters of greater importance. He first gained attention as the crooked sheriff who makes life miserable for Kirk Douglas in the terrific modern western The Braves Walk Lonely . It was also Herman Scobie, a war veteran with a hook instead of a hand, who was one of the sidekicks of Audrey Hepburn ‘s deceased husband , in the unforgettable Charade .

A tireless worker, George Kennedy was capable of filming numerous television episodes and several films a year, including Lullaby for a Corpse , First Victory , Flight of the Phoenix (1965) , Valley of Violence and The Four Sons of Katie Elder . He was also one of the officers who tasked Lee Marvin with a suicide mission in The Dirty Dozen .

George Kennedy’s most prominent character would be Dragline, a huge prison thug that Luke ( Paul Newman ) lands in in Handyman , Stuart Rosenberg ‘s iconic prison drama . “Here you don’t have a name until Dragline gives you one,” they told the protagonist, who ends up beating him and earns his respect by impressing him with his tenacity, since Luke does not give up the fight no matter how much he is pummeled. Unforgettable sequences like the one in which Luke tries to eat a large number of eggs remain in the memory of moviegoers.

-Luke, why did you say 50? George Kennedy was saying to Paul Newman . You could have said 35 or 39…

-I thought it was a rounder number.

He showed such chemistry with Newman that it is not surprising that George Kennedy won the Best Supporting Oscar that year (more surprising is that Newman, also nominated, had to wait two decades to take home the statuette, for The Color of Money ).

“The wonderful thing about that tape,” Kennedy recalled in an interview, “is that as my character progressed, I went from being the bad guy to the good guy.”

Since then, George Kennedy became a real luxury secondary. In addition to taking part in the successful Death on the Nile , The Gallows Noose , Lost Horizons (1973) , and Bolero , he accompanied Clint Eastwood in two titles, A Booty of $500,000 and License to Kill . He was also one of the faces of the seventies catastrophic cinema, because in addition to taking part in Earthquake , he played Captain Joe Patroni, chief mechanic and troubleshooter for the airline in Airport . His character was the only one to reappear in the sequels: Airport 75 ,Airport 77 and Airport 79 .

At the end of the 80s, he joined the permanent cast of the Dallas series , where he played the magnate Carter McKay. George Kennedy is known to many modern youngsters and popcorn fans mostly because he was Captain Ed Hocken, Leslie Nielsen ‘s boss in Get It and its sequels.

Divorced from Dorothy Gillooly, George Kennedy had two children with Norma Wurman, whom he divorced twice. He eventually got together with Joan McCarthy, with whom he lives in Boise (a city in Idaho). The hardest episode in his life was the imprisonment of his daughter, Shaunna, an episode that made him adopt Taylor, his little granddaughter.

Author of three books (two novels and an autobiography), George Kennedy was not one of those who retired easily, as he remained active until the end of his days.